Anthropomorphic objects from the Egyptian Predynastic have been a topic of frequent study and debate, from the time they were first excavated until today. These objects, including human figurines, hippopotamus tusks, tag amulets and combs carved with the human image, continue to fascinate and perplex scholars today. Objects such as these form part of the extensive and distinctive iconographic imagery of Predynastic Egypt, and are often interpreted solely in the context of their symbolic or iconographic significance. The aim of this study is to examine these anthropomorphic objects in terms of their original context in order to determine what role they played in Predynastic burials - a useful method, as most of these objects are found in graves. A database comprising all provenanced anthropomorphic Predynastic objects and their placement in the grave, in addition to the details of each grave, has been composed in order to conduct a detailed analysis. The analysis is geared to answer the question of whether it is possible to determine the function of these objects from the available data, and if so, what the results could tell us about burial practices and rituals in Predynastic Egypt. It became clear from the results that the context, especially the specific placement of the object in the grave, can reflect significantly the meaning and function of anthropomorphic objects. The placement and function seems to have depended on the type of object: for instance, figurines had different placements and meanings to tusks and tags. Ultimately, it appears that anthropomorphic objects, especially figurines, were personal items with which the deceased were identified and buried by their relations and friends. They may have served as magical or protective items, or as representations of ancestors or the deceased individuals themselves. This conclusion is significant, as it confirms the previous assumptions about the functions of anthropomorphic objects in Predynastic graves through a thorough analysis of available data, making a contribution to our understanding of Predynastic burial rituals.

The Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies is published annually on behalf of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies by Lockwood Press. The Canadian Society for Coptic Studies aims to bring together individuals interested in Coptic Studies by promoting meetings and conferences as well as preparing scholarly works for publication.

Invisible Archaeologies: hidden aspects of daily life in ancient Egypt and Nubia brings together eight of the papers presented at a conference held in Oxford in 2017. The theme aimed to bring together international early-career researchers applying novel archaeological and anthropological methods to the 'overlooked' in ancient Egypt and Nubia - and included diverse topics such as women, prisoners, entangled communities and funerary displays. The papers use a range of archaeological and textual material and span from the Predynastic period to the Late Period. By applying methodology used so successfully within the discipline of archaeology over the past 20 years, they offer a different perspective on Egyptological research, and demonstrate how such theoretical models can broaden scholarly understanding of the Nile Valley.

The tomb published in this volume is the third large Late Period shaft tomb that has been excavated in the south-western part of the Abusir cemetery. It belongs to Menekhibnekau, who held a number of important titles (among the "General," "Overseer of Libyans," "Overseer of the kbnwt-vessels," etc) under Ahmose II and may have lived until the beginning of Dynasty 27. Although his tomb had been robbed, a number of important and interesting pieces from his burial equipment, including a seal of the necropolis and a faience menit with the name of Ahmose II, have been found in his burial chamber. In a separate shaft, large embalmer's cache has been found that contained more than three hundred large storage vessels and a number of smaller receptacles of different kind. On many of them, short inscriptions were preserved that often mention materials used during the mummification process including the presupposed dates of their use. In the excursi, texts from the embalmer's deposit, Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions on a Phoenician storage jar and a xylotomic analysis of wooden objects from the embalmer's deposit are published. The religious texts and scenes that originally had decorated the burial chamber should appear in the second volume of this book (presently under preparation).

This volume presents the findings of three seasons of excavation in the 1980s at Kom el-Hisn 'the mound of the fortress,' in the northwest Nile Delta. This provincial community was often in the orbit of Memphis, the capital and administrative center of Egypt's Old Kingdom Period. Small areas of occupations of the 1st Intermediate and early Middle Kingdom periods were also excavated. One of the goals of the excavations was to complement and compare the substantial ancient textual record of this era with Kom el-Hisn's archaeological record because such evidence is sparse for Lower Egypt between about 2500 and 1800 BC. The findings presented here reveal the complexity of small Old Kingdom settlements in the context of the Memphite state organization and shed light on the changing relationships of this administrative centre with its provincial communities. Kom el-Hisn's faunal, floral, lithic and architectural remains are presented and discussed in detail, as are some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to this research.

The Old Testament often presents Egypt as a place of bondage, but the picture is not monolithic. Upon closer examination, one can argue that many biblical figures flee to Egypt as a place of refuge. Garrett Galvin examines biblical texts from a number of different time periods (1 Kgs 11:14-12:24; Jeremiah 46; Matt 2:13-15, 19-21) in order to highlight the importance of literary genre for understanding the phenomenon of Egypt as a place of refuge in the Old Testament. For his study of Egypt the author focuses on the broad sweep of ancient Near Eastern history through literary, historical, and textual criticism of selected texts. His aim in doing so is to draw the reader's attention to the complexity of Egypt in the Bible and to help understanding the situation of refugees in the Bible. He also highlights the evolving relationship between Israel and Egypt as well as the influence of the ancient Near East on Israel.

This volume presents seventeen ostraca and two jar labels from the Egyptian Museum of Cairo with transliteration, translation and commentary. All were discovered during Davis and Carter's excavations in the Valley of the Kings, and interpretive remarks explore the relationship between the finds and the locations and spread of workmen's huts in the valley.

As reflected in the title From Microcosm to Macrocosm: Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia, both a micro-approach introducing microhistories of individual sites according to recent archaeological fieldwork incorporating interdisciplinary methods as well as general patterns and regional developments in Northeast Africa are discussed. This combination of research questions on the micro-level with the macro-level provides new information about cities and households in Ancient Egypt and Nubia and makes the book unique. Architectural studies as well as analyses of material culture and the new application of microarchaeology, here especially of micromorphology and archaeometric applications, are presented as case studies from sites primarily dating to the New Kingdom (Second Millennium BC). The rich potential of well-preserved but still not completely explored sites in modern Sudan, especially as direct comparison for already excavated sites located in Egypt, is in particular emphasised in the book. Settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia has recently moved away from a strong textual approach and generalised studies to a more site-specific approach and household studies. This new bottom-up approach applied by current fieldwork projects is demonstrated in the book. The volume is intended for all specialists at settlements sites in Northeast Africa, for students of Egyptology and Nubian Studies, but it will be of interest to anyone working in the field of settlement archaeology. It is the result of a conference on the same subject held in 2017 as the closing event of the European Research Council funded project AcrossBorders at Munich.

The book presents the discoveries made by the Polish archaeological mission in Saqqara, the central part of the largest ancient Egyptian royal necropolis. The area adjacent to the Pyramid of King Djoser on the monument's west side, so far neglected by archaeologists, turned out to be an important burial place of the Egyptian nobility from two periods of Pharaonic history: the Old Kingdom (the late third millennium BC) and the Ptolemaic Period (the late first millennium BC). The earlier, lower cemetery yielded rock-hewn tombs with splendid wall decoration in relief and painting. The book also describes methods of conservation applied to the discovered artefacts and episodes from the mission's life.

In this book, Bob Becking provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the origins, lives, and eventual fate of the Yehudites, or Judeans, at Elephantine, framed within the greater history of the rise and fall of the Persian Empire. The Yehudites were among those mercenaries recruited by the Persians to defend the southwestern border of the empire in the fifth century BCE. Becking argues that this group, whom some label as the first "Jews," lived on the island of Elephantine in relative peace with other ethnic groups under the aegis of the pax persica. Drawing on Aramaic and Demotic texts discovered during excavations on the island and at Syene on the adjacent shore of the Nile, Becking finds evidence of intermarriage, trade cooperation, and even a limited acceptance of one another's gods between the various ethnic groups at Elephantine. His analysis of the Elephantine Yehudites' unorthodox form of Yahwism provides valuable insight into the group's religious beliefs and practices. An important contribution to the study of Yehudite life in the diaspora, this accessibly written and sweeping history enhances our understanding of the varieties of early Jewish life and how these contributed to the construction of Judaism.

In this volume, C. L. Crouch and Jeremy M. Hutton offer a data-driven approach to translation practice in the Iron Age. The authors build on and reinforce Crouch's conclusions in her former work about Deuteronomy and the Akkadian treaty tradition, employing Hutton's "Optimal Translation" theory to analyze the Akkadian-Aramaic bilingual inscription from Tell Fekheriyeh. The authors argue that the inscription exhibits an isomorphic style of translation and only the occasional use of dynamic replacement sets. They apply these findings to other proposed instances of Iron Age translation from Akkadian into dialects of Northwest Semitic, including the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon and the relationship between the treaty of Assur-nerari V with Mati'ilu and the Sefire treaties. The authors then argue that the lexical and syntactic changes in these cases diverge so significantly from the model established by Tell Fekheriyeh as to exclude the possibility that these treaties constitute translational relationships.

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno Garcia sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue duree. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

The modern view of the ancient Egyptian world is often through the lens of a scribe: the trained, schooled, literate individual who was present at many levels of Egyptian society, from a local accountant to the highest echelons of society. And yet, despite the wealth of information the scribes left us, we know relatively little about what underpinned their world, about their mentality and about their everyday life. Ancient Egyptian Scribes examines how these figures kept both the administrative life and cultural memory of Egypt running. These are the Egyptians who ran the state and formed the supposedly meritocratic system of local administration and government. Case studies look at accountants, draughtsmen, scribes with military and dynastic roles, the authors of graffiti and literati who interacted in different ways with Pharaohs and other leaders. Assuming no previous knowledge of ancient Egypt, and ensuring accessibility for students and non-specialists, the various roles and identities of the scribes are presented in a way that offers structured information on their cultural identity and self-presentation, and provides readers with an insight into the making of Egyptian written culture.

Religion in the ancient world, and ancient Egyptian religion in particular, is often perceived as static, hierarchically organised, and centred on priests, tombs, and temples. Engagement with archaeological and textual evidence dispels these beguiling if superficial narratives, however. Individuals and groups continuously shaped their environments, and were shaped by them in turn. This volume explores the ways in which this adaptation, negotiation, and reconstruction of religious understandings took place. The material results of these processes are termed 'cultural geography'. The volume examines this 'cultural geography' through the study of three vectors of religious agency: religious practices, the transmission of texts and images, and the study of religious landscapes. Bringing together papers by experts in a variety of Egyptological disciplines and other fields of study, this volume presents the results of an interdisciplinary workshop held at the University of Leiden, 7-9 November 2018, kindly funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Vidi Talent Scheme. The 16 papers presented here discuss the archaeology of religion and religious practices, landscape archaeology and 'cultural geography', and the transmission and adaptation of texts and images, across not only the history of Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the Christian periods, but also in ancient Sudanese archaeology, the Arabian peninsula, early and medieval south-eastern Asia, and contemporary China.

The Festivals of Opet, the Valley, and the New Year: Their socio-religious functions compares the religious and social functions of these three Festivals, the first two of which were often regarded by the Egyptians as a pair; the New Year Festival stands out on account of its corpus of surviving material and importance. Until now, detailed study of the New Year Festival has only been carried out with reference to the Greco-Roman period; this study turns its attention to the New Kingdom. The book analyses the broad perspectives that encompass Egyptian religion and cult practices which provided the context not only for worship and prayer, but also for the formation of social identity and responsibility. The festivals are examined in the whole together with their settings in the religious and urban landscapes. The best example is New Kingdom Thebes where large temples and burial sites survive intact today with processional routes connecting some of them. Also presented are the abundant written sources providing deep insight into those feasts celebrated for Amun-Re, the king of the gods. The volume also includes a list of dated records which provides a concordance for the Egyptian calendars.

The unique site of Mersa Gawasis was a base for seaborne trade along the Red Sea coast during the Middle Kingdom. The Egyptians' purpose was to trade with Punt for incense and other exotic materials. There is little evidence of any permanent structures at the site apart from man-made caves in which shipping equipment was stored between expeditions. The pottery is, therefore, amongst the most significant evidence for human activity here. Vessel types include many marl C jars, but other kinds of vessels including significant foreign material also occur, some in large quantities. This variety of vessels and the careful reuse of potsherds is central to an understanding of specific and day to day domestic activities and of how the site operated. Mersa Gawasis has many vessel forms of the 12th and Early 13th dynasties. Epigraphic evidence closely dates the site, helping to confirm and underpin an understanding of vessel types and technologies within the ceramic chronology of the period. This volume presents the site's wide variety of ceramic material, offering also an interpretation of what pottery reveals about activities at the site. The author and excavation photographer have worked together to enhance details of the text with specific photographs.

The modern view of the ancient Egyptian world is often through the lens of a scribe: the trained, schooled, literate individual who was present at many levels of Egyptian society, from a local accountant to the highest echelons of society. And yet, despite the wealth of information the scribes left us, we know relatively little about what underpinned their world, about their mentality and about their everyday life. Tracing ten key biographies, Ancient Egyptian Scribes examines how these figures kept both the administrative life and cultural memory of Egypt running. These are the Egyptians who ran the state and formed the supposedly meritocratic system of local administration and government. Case studies look at accountants, draughtsmen, scribes with military and dynastic roles, the authors of graffiti and literati who interacted in different ways with Pharaohs and other leaders. Assuming no previous knowledge of ancient Egypt, the various roles and identities of the scribes are presented in a concise and accessible way, offering structured information on their cultural identity and self-presentation, and providing readers with an insight into the making of Egyptian written culture.

The Great Oasis of Egypt provides the first full study of the Dakhla and Kharga Oases in antiquity, written by participants in several of the current archaeological projects in this region. The oases were closely tied to Egypt and to each other, but not always easy to control, and their agricultural productivity varied with climatic conditions. The book discusses the oases' geology, water resources, history, administration, economy, trade connections, taxation, urbanism, religion, burial practices, literary culture, and art. New evidence for human health and illness from the cemeteries is presented along with a synthesis on the use of different types of cloth in burial. A particular emphasis is placed on pottery, with its ability to tell us both about how people lived and how far imports and exports can be seen from the shapes and fabrics, and both literature and art suggest full participation in the culture of Greco-Roman Egypt.

First published in 1993. This is a new edition of Akhaenaten's boundary stelae, which now includes information about most of the boundary markers, the tablets were accompanied by statues of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and two of their daughters, all of which stood on low platforms that were raised above the level of the floor. In addition was the awareness that the statues at the site of Stela A were elevated to a greater degree than were the corresponding statues at other sites (insofar as this could be judged from published photographs). The evidence in the publication indicated, moreover, that Stela A, along with Stela B (some two miles south) were the latest of the boundary monuments to be inscribed, since both concluded with a colophon, dated to the end of Akhenaten's eighth regnal year, added to the standard text of the Later Proclamation found on these and other stelae of this series.

The reign of Tutankhamun was of major significance in the history of ancient Egypt. Following Howard Carter's discovery of the king's tomb in 1922, the story of the boy who became Pharaoh, died young and was buried in splendor at the height of Egyptian civilization captivated generations. But there exists a wide discrepancy between that saga and what scholarship has discovered in the last few decades about Tutankhamun's reign. A truer story is revealed, not by objects from his tomb, but by statuary, reliefs, paintings, and architecture from outside the Valley of the Kings. Marianne Eaton-Krauss, a leading authority on the boy king and the Amarna Period, guides readers through the recent findings of international research and the relevant documentation from a wide variety of sources, to create an accessible and comprehensive biography. Tracing Tutankhamun's life from birth to burial, she analyzes his parentage, his childhood as Prince Tutankhaten, his accession and change of name to Tutankhamun, his role in the restoration of the traditional cults and his own building projects, his death and burial, and the attitudes of his immediate successors to his reign. Illustrated with color and black-and-white images, the book includes extensive endnotes and selected bibliography, which will make it essential reading for students and scholars as well as anyone interested in Tutankhamun.

At the end of the 6th dynasty the 500 year old established order of the Old Kingdom fell apart, which, according to the interpretation given to various contemporary literary sources, started a period of social unrest and economic decline. The magnitude of the economic investment bestowed by the members of the higher social strata on the monuments that would be the abode for their after-life leads to the hypothesis that an economic decline could also manifest itself in the dimensions of the various architectonic elements of these monuments. The dimensions of the tombs have been chosen as the subject of this study. The preliminary part of the study is performed on the tombs in the necropolis of Giza. The results of the study are compared with the same measurements in the necropoleis of Saqqara and Abusir. The conclusion is that the economic decline started already at the early dynastic period and not as a result of the caving in of the Old Kingdom. An interesting 'side-effect' of the study is that the dimensions of the tombs can serve as a method to check a dating that has been proposed based on other aspect of the tomb.

This book examines different forms of ritual activities performed in houses of Graeco- Roman Egypt. It draws on the rich archaeological record of rural housing and evidence from literature or papyrological references to both urban and rural housing. The introduction critically considers the literature relevant to the topic in order to identify the research gap. Chapter I attempts to reconstruct the structure of urban and rural houses in Graeco- Roman Egypt in the light of papyri and archaeology. This aims to establish the physical and spatial framework for the rituals considered in the following chapters. In line with this reconstruction of domestic properties is the reconstruction of the architectural layout and use of the domestic pylon in Chapter II. Chapter III deals with two rituals enacted before the front door of the house, namely the sacrifice of fish on the 9th of Thoth and the sacrifice of pigs on the 15th of Pachon. Chapter IV considers the ritual of the illumination of lamps for the goddess Athena-Neith within and around houses on the 13th of Epeiph. Chapter V highlights the use of the house as an arena for social types of rituals associated with dining, birthdays, the mallokouria, the epikrisis, and marriage. Chapter VI explores the religious sphere of houses, which is obvious from domestic shrines, wall paintings with religious themes, and figurines of Egyptian and Graeco-Roman deities uncovered from houses. The last chapter deals with mourning rituals, which the house occupants performed after the demise of their beloved animals, such as dogs, and their family members. In the conclusion, I summarize my work and draw out its implications, suggesting that the house was the locus of social, religious, and funerary rituals in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Hieroglyphs were far more than a language. They were an omnipresent and all-powerful force in communicating the messages of ancient Egyptian culture for over three thousand years; used as monumental art, as a means of identifying Egyptianness, and for rarefied communication with the gods. In this exciting new study, Penelope Wilson explores the cultural significance of the script with an emphasis on previously neglected areas such as cryptography, the continuing decipherment into modern times, and examines the powerful fascination hieroglyphs still hold for us today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Egyptians went to great lengths to protect their dead from the omnipresent threat of robbery by incorporating specially developed architectural features in their tombs. However, the architecture of tomb security has rarely been studied as a subject in its own right and is usually treated as a secondary topic in publications of a scholarly nature, which tend to regard its role as incidental to the design of the tomb rather than perhaps being the driving force behind it. This issue had been raised in the early Twentieth Century by Reisner (1908: 11), who suggested that the rapid evolution of Egyptian tomb substructures was as a result of the desire for tomb security and more ostentatious tombs, rather than a development spurred by religious or funerary practices. Taking this premise much further, this book presents an in-depth analysis of the architecture of tomb security in Egypt from the Predynastic Period (c. 5000-4000 BC) until the early Fourth Dynasty (c. 2500 BC) by extrapolating data on the security features of published tombs from the whole of Egypt and gathering it together for the first time in one accessible database. Using the information assembled it adds new information to the current body of knowledge concerning the architecture of tomb security and explains many of the underlying reasons behind their adoption. By thematically analysing these features in order to draw conclusions it also demonstrates that many aspects of the architecture of the Egyptian tomb over this period, in both royal and private contexts-whilst subject to changing tastes, needs and ideologies-had indeed originated as the result of the need to protect the tomb or improve its security.